Paramount gets Sacha Baron Cohen's $20m goat

The Borat and Brüno creator's new comedy, where he plays a goat herder and a deposed dictator, has been snapped up in a lucrative deal after a bidding war

Sacha Baron Cohen, animal lover … the comic, seen here with a wallaby at the Australian premiere of Borat, will play a goat herder in his as-yet-untitled new film. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images

It's the quirky tale of a British comic, a Hollywood studio and a rare $20m offer to shoot a new movie. Oh, and don't forget the goat.

According to the Deadline blog, Sacha Baron Cohen's next movie has been snapped up by Paramount in a lucrative deal which instantly catapults him into the ranks of Hollywood's biggest stars. It will see the comedian play the dual roles of a goat herder and a deposed foreign dictator who finds himself lost in the US.

Paramount reportedly sealed the deal by sending a real live goat dressed in a studio T-shirt to Baron Cohen's LA home, after offering him a "20-20" deal. A rare phenomenon in an increasingly straitened Hollywood, this would give him $20m (£13m) upfront and an initial 20% share of the new film's gross, rising to 30% if the movie is successful.

Rather than following the mockumentary format of his Brüno and Borat movies, the new film is said to be a straight up comedy in the vein of Coming to America and Trading Places. Deadline reports that Curb Your Enthusiasm writers Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel, along with Baron Cohen himself, are behind the screenplay.

The financial package has raised eyebrows across Hollywood: studios have successfully reined in star earnings in the wake of the global economic crisis, which has hit their credit facilities hard, even as box-office numbers have remained high. Furthermore, Baron Cohen's most recent movie, Brüno, was a relative damp squib financially, taking just $138m (£90m) worldwide compared with $261m (£170m) for his 2006 hit Borat.

However, it seems the combination of the Curb Your Enthusiasm team and Baron Cohen, along with the project's relatively low budget of $65m, may have been too much for studios to resist. Four out of the six companies that were pitched were reportedly ready to greenlight the film and its creative team's financial demands, with Paramount finally winning out after a bidding war with Sony.

Deadline quoted an insider: "This actually shows where the bar is for A-talent to get something done. That it used to be, if an A-talent was interested in a project, that would get the movie going. Now, you have to have the combination of an A-level star and a great idea that is completely developed."

Baron Cohen was also recently in talks to star in a remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and is taking a role in Martin Scorsese's next venture, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. However, the goat herder movie will be his next film, provided he approves the script.